Kindle: hot in China

June 23, 2013 Leave a comment

Kindle: hot in China

Jun 19, 2013 12:41pm by Julie Zhu

It’s not just Apple that can generate sales buzz in China for new devices. A couple of weeks on from Amazon’s Kindle launch in China, and the new e-reading devices are becoming hot properties.

The company told beyondbrics in an email that the two Kindle tablets were sold out “almost immediately” and customers are leaving their contact information for the waiting list to be next in line for new stocks.Amazon started sales of two Kindle devices in China on June 7 – the Kindle Fire HD and the Kindle Paperwhite on its own Chinese website as well as through outlets of Suning, the country’s biggest electrics retailer.

In Shanghai about 2,000 Kindle devices were sold in Suning’s stores in one week after the launch, with the Kindle Paperwhite contributing to 70 per cent of the sales, according to the city’s Labour Daily. It quotes Suning describing the Kindle’s first round of sales as “spectacular”, exceeding expectations.

In Beijing, the tablets were out of stock in many of Suning’s shops within 48 hours after the launch and Amazon’s couriers have been complaining about their heavy workload due to Kindle’s massive orders, according to TMTpost.

Sun Xiaoqing, a 25-year-old white-collar worker in Beijing told beyondbrics that she had waited a long time for Kindle’s arrival and bought both Kindle Fire and Kindle Paperwhite online right after the launch.

“It’s wise to buy them immediately; otherwise I’m afraid they will be sold out soon. Many of my friends also want to buy them,” she said.

Sun explained that she waited for the Kindle’s long-overdue release in China mainly because of its more convenient after-sale service and better compatibility with Chinese language, than other Kindle products purchased overseas or through online agents on Taobao, China’s biggest e-commerce website.

The Kindle’s arrival has boosted the e-reader and e-book market in China. The Labour Daily even referred to the “catfish effect” (where a whole market is activated/motivated by the addition of a strong competitor) to describe its landing in China.

Yu Meng, marketing manager of Dangdang, agreed. “Kindle’s arrival is definitely a good thing, a positive stimulus, for China’s e-reading market. With its joining, the whole market has drawn more attention from the public and media,” he said.

Dangdang is China’s biggest online book retailer and also one of Amazon’s local competitors. In the immediate wake of Kindle’s launch, the retailer started presales of its own e-reading device “doucon 2″, a move seen to compete with the Kindle Paperwhite. The doucon 2 retails at Rmb699, while the Kindle Paperwhite is priced at Rmb849.

The launch of the Kindles and doucon 2 have boosted sales of e-books on the websites of Amazon China and Dangdang, respectively. On Dangdang.com, sales of e-books were up 20 per cent over the past week, thanks to presales of doucon 2, according to Yu. The figure is expected to be higher after the device is officially released in early July.

In addition, Kindle and other domestic e-readers may spur an increase in Chinese people’s reading volume, which according to Shenzhen Evening News, is less than one book (excluding textbooks) per year.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that could happen. As Sun Xiaoqing admits, previously she only read one book or less every week. But now, with her Kindle, she reads whenever she can, particularly when on her long two-hour commute. “I can finish two to three books now,” she said.

Filed under TMT Trends

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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